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Soft Gingerbread (II)
Mrs. Snider.
Five cups of flour, three cups of molasses, one cup of butter, one cup of milk or water, two tablespoons ginger, two eggs, one teaspoon soda; bake slowly.
A plain molasses gingerbread of the sort baked in quantity and cut into squares. The recipe gives no pan, no mixing order and no time, so the useful work is in filling those gaps.
- "Bake slowly"A slow oven in this period means 300-325F. Molasses batters scorch at the edges and stay raw in the middle if pushed hotter, and this is a wet, dark batter that gives no visual warning before it burns.
- Pan and yieldThe batter runs to roughly two and a half quarts. A 9x13-inch pan holds it at about an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half deep and takes something like 40-55 minutes at 325F; two 8-inch square pans work as well and bake faster. Test with a skewer in the centre.
- Cup measuresNineteenth-century cups are often close to the modern 8 fl oz, though usage varied, and flour was scooped rather than spooned. Five scooped cups is about 700-750 g; start around 650 g and hold a little back if the batter seems stiff.
- MolassesUse mild or full-flavour molasses, not blackstrap. Blackstrap is far more bitter and acidic than the table molasses meant here, and three cups of it will dominate everything else.
- Soda and riseOne teaspoon of soda against three cups of acidic molasses is modest by modern reckoning. Expect a dense, moist, close-textured cake rather than a light one -- that is what soft gingerbread was. Sift the soda through the flour so it distributes; do not slake it in the milk and let the batter stand.
- GingerTwo tablespoons is a lot by modern standards, and modern ground ginger is likely fresher and sharper than a nineteenth-century household's. A tablespoon and a half is closer to the intended effect.
- Mixing orderNo method is given. Beat the softened butter into the molasses, add the eggs, then the flour and soda alternately with the milk. The batter will look thin; that is correct.
- KeepingIt cuts cleanly once fully cool and is better on the second day, wrapped. Molasses holds moisture, and it keeps well for most of a week.
Soft gingerbread -- as opposed to the rolled, crisp gingerbread cut into shapes -- is the cake form of the family, baked in a pan and served in squares with butter, tea or apple sauce. Molasses did the work of both sweetener and liquid in American kitchens well into the nineteenth century, being cheaper and more widely available than refined sugar, and the pairing of molasses with saleratus or soda was one of the earliest reliable chemical leavenings in the home baker's repertoire: the acid in the syrup activates the alkali directly, no cream of tartar required. The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1874) was compiled from contributions by named local women for the benefit of the Home for the Friendless, which is why this one arrives credited to Mrs. Snider and why the book carries several gingerbreads in a row with no attempt to reconcile them -- each is simply somebody's household version, set down as she made it.